Front matter (continued 5)

Above him there was one fierce paroxysm of fire and then the reports diminished, sprang from lower levels. He saw quick flashes of light among the trees. Wounded men limped and hobbled past him in the darkness. The outpost was retiring into the valley. A bullet cracked close to him. He turned, suddenly conscious of companionship. The countess was standing at his side, her pale dress luminous in the night. The dog growled angrily in front of her.

"Pauline!" His voice was almost a shriek of alarm for her. "Pauline! For the love of God, come with me—now—there is yet time! I cannot leave you!"

She grasped his hand, as a friend would.

"No, cher—I stay—as a pledge for your victorious return!"

The last men of the outpost were running past them. Overhead the bullets cracked viciously, phutting against the walls.

"I implore you! There may be heavy fighting!"

"No, mon ami. I stay." Her voice was quite decided. "I have cellars." She pressed his hand, then, with a quick movement, flung herself into his arms, was one with him for a brief second. He unloosed her embrace.

"Go, then," he said, his voice trembling. "Quickly. God be with you!"

"And with you, my beloved! Take the dog with you—he will tell me where you are." She bent down to the animal, whispered to him, pointed to the colonel. Heavy volleys crashed out of the trees above. She sprang back into the house.

The dog at his heels, the colonel raced after the last of his men. They turned to spit livid spurts of flame at the dark wall of the ravine. In a few moments they were clambering up a steep path through the wood on the other side.

Half an hour later the Germans felt the long line of trenches on the lip of the ravine, attacked, and were heavily repulsed.

At dawn the colonel reconnoitred the situation from his position on the height. In front of him the enemy, abandoning the valley in which lay so many of his dead, had entrenched himself along the opposite edge of the ravine. Vicious little bursts of rifle fire at scattered parties or individuals who hazarded themselves for a moment out of cover betokened the vigilance of both sides, and on both sides the many spadefuls of earth tossed in the air showed that the work of strengthening the positions was proceeding feverishly. So far no artillery had entered into the fray, but at any moment the first shell from one party or the other might come whining across the gulf. To the right of the Zouaves another battalion had established contact, was maintaining itself. To the left, at the head of the ravine, where they joined with the next regiment, a fierce fight was proceeding—attack and counter-attack which finally left the positions unchanged. Far to right and left the crackle of rifle fire swelled and continued. Mingled with it came the rapid detonations of field-guns, their reports ever nearer. The battle was developing all along the line. The colonel received positive orders to maintain himself at all costs, to risk nothing. Upon the maintenance of this thin screen depended the safety of two armies, forming and in motion, perhaps the fate of France.

Through his glasses the colonel gazed into the depths of the ravine, where the white stone château glinted through the dark, thickly surrounding trees. A wisp of smoke ascended from one of the chimneys and he had to be content with that assurance that all was well. A patrol sent out in the first light had failed to reach it. All access to the château was commanded by spurs from the other side of the ravine. But apparently it was unoccupied by the enemy. He thought suddenly of the dog, wondered what had happened to it. In the stress of the night attack he had lost sight of it, forgotten it. Even as he searched his memory it came bounding along the trench towards him, nosed against his leg. There was something fastened to its collar, a letter.

As he read it, all the passion of his ascetic, sun-parched years, awakened by the exquisite charm of that slender pale woman lonely there below him, surged up in him, overmastering, obliterating all else. The eloquent eyes under the auburn hair were vivid to him, spoke to his deepest soul. Her letter was a prose lyric of passion wherein all emotions—longing, tenderness, anxiety, surrender, pride in her lover, even a flash of the doubt born of swiftly-given love—contended. It was revelatory of her inmost self as her speech had never been. She, it seemed, had also waited—waited. Some of the phrases in it—"The burning sacrament of your kiss"—"linked in an instant for eternity"—branded themselves upon his brain. In a whirl of cerebral excitement he tore out a page from his note-book, dashed off a letter not less ardent, not less than hers the ecstasy of a soul that lives at last in the consuming fire of love.

He attached it to the dog's collar, pointed away. The animal sprang over the low parapet, disappeared in the undergrowth below.

An artillery officer came up, reported himself as the observer of the newly arrived battery. He evinced much professional interest in the château, seemed eager to make it the target for his guns. The colonel explained the situation.

All through the multitudinous tasks and responsibilities of the day his soul yearned out to the lonely woman below. To have risked his life in an endeavour to see her would have been more than a joy, it would have been the satisfaction of a need of his being—but his life was pledged to France. To him his duty was a religion with which his love did not conflict, nay both, upon the summit of his life, blended and were one. Yet tempted, he found himself speculating upon the possibility of creeping down at nightfall.

But night saw the intense glare of three German searchlights shoot out of the darkness. A storm of shrapnel burst fiercely over the trenches of the Zouaves. A wild attack of shadowy forms surging up out of the undergrowth beat against the parapet, ebbed back in an inferno of noise from the long line of countless stabs of flame, was hurled into the ravine under the reiterated crashes, the sudden livid flares of shrapnel from the battery behind.

Down below, at the highest window of the château, the countess stood looking out into the night, her lover's letter pressed close against her bosom. High above her flickered and spurted the endless rifle flashes from his trenches, paling the stars above the dark hill. The noise of the conflict, the shouts and cries amid the re-echoing din, was a tribute to his power. She gloried in it, exulted when the attack subsided, withdrew in a clamour of voices past the château to the hill behind.

Descending, she wrote yet another letter to him—a proud pæan of love triumphant. Then suddenly she flung herself, face downward, arms outstretched, across the table in a passion of irrepressible tears. She lay thus a long time, until the heaving of her body ceased and she slept, her cheek upon the letter.

The morning was yet young when she despatched the dog once more upon his mission to her lover. Save for an occasional shot, the opposing trenches were quiet. Stretcher parties were at work in the valley. Waited upon by the ancient Marie—eloquent in her protestations of terror during the night—she breakfasted, counting the minutes until the return of her messenger. Roland arrived, pleased with himself, as his energetic tail testified. Once more with swelling breast and radiant face she read her lover's letter, passionate as the first. In a postscript, it begged her to give no information that might imperil her.

During the day the battle woke again between the trenches at the head of the ravine, continued in fierce spasms hour after hour. In the afternoon she wrote another letter, despatched it and received an answer. She was strangely, exaltedly happy. He was holding firm. No one came to the château. At night she again posted herself at the window to watch the flashes from his trenches.

The third day dawned. She wrote, assuring him of her safety—of much else. The reply duly arrived. A false peace brooded over the little valley. Ceding to an impulse, she went out, tried to get a clearer view of his position, to see—she would not admit to herself her absurd hope. Then, regretting her imprudence, she returned hurriedly.

The grey of afternoon already filled the valley when a loud, imperative knocking upon the great door re-echoed through the house. The countess stood as if turned to stone; her heart seemed to stop. So soon! The threat to her exalted, impassioned life of the past days paralysed her. She could with difficulty cry to Marie to admit.

A German officer entered, a group of soldiers behind him. He saluted with stiff ceremony.

"Madame, I regret you must leave this house at once!" His French was painfully correct.

She faced him, tense.

"And if I refuse?"

"Then, madame, you leave me no alternative but to arrest you as a suspect."

She cried an inarticulate protest. The dog, hitherto standing by her side as though straining at a leash, sprang forward with an angry growl.

The German regarded the menace coolly, without moving a muscle.

"Schönes Tier!" he murmured. Then, turning to his men, he ordered: "Secure it, one of you!"

Thunderously growling, with a puzzled look at his mistress standing like a statue, the dog suffered a cord to be slipped through its collar. The blood surged into the countess's face.

"Monsieur——!" The sense of outrage choked her.

"Madame," he interrupted calmly, "I need scarcely remind you that time presses. You will not, I am sure, constrain us to violence."

She met his eyes, was confronted with inexorable necessity. Her hands twitched.

"You will at least allow me a little time to collect a few clothes and valuables?"

"A little time, madame."

She ran from the room, hearing as a last sound the dog choking as it struggled on the leash. In the hall was Marie, haggard, her old body shaking with excitement. She clutched at her mistress's arm.

"Madame! what is happening?" She lapsed into patois under the stress.

The countess replied also, without noticing it, in the language of her childhood.

"I am arrested. They are letting me fetch some clothes."

The servant suppressed a cry. "Madame!" The old hands trembled upon her. "The colonel!—a note to him—he will come—give it to me!"

"But Marie——" They looked deep down into each other's soul. With a sudden movement of decision the countess ran into an adjoining room, scribbled "They are taking me. P." on a piece of paper, thrust it into the old woman's hand. "You are sure, Marie?" she asked wildly, seeking condonation for herself.

"Chère dame!" was the brief, eloquent reply. The old woman disappeared.

The countess ran upstairs to her bedroom, the one word "Delay!—delay!—delay!—delay!" beating in her brain.

Down in the salon the officer gave a few curt commands to his men, ordered the dog to be taken into the yard. Left alone, he strolled round the room examining the pictures, the bibelots, opening the drawers of the secretaire. The minutes passed. The house was in deep silence. He began to get impatient, to wonder if some trick——. But he was sure of the vigilance of his men. A quarter of an hour had elapsed when he heard a sharp little burst of fire from the German trenches above. It was not answered. The valley resumed its unwonted quiet. Exasperated at the delay he began to pace up and down the room, looked at his watch, gave his prisoner yet another five minutes.

Suddenly his eye was caught by a little piece of folded paper on the floor under the piano. He picked it up, opened it. It was a letter that had evidently fallen from the countess's dress when she ran from the room. He read it through, a gleam in his eyes. "So! meine Gräfin!" he murmured, and smiled.

The colonel's passionate outpouring awoke no sympathetic thrill of romance in his breast. The tip of a pink tongue protruding under his fair moustache, his clever blue eyes alight, he turned it over, pondering the signature. From many indications he deduced that the writer was in the trenches on the other side of the ravine, was of commanding rank. Even as he considered it there was a knock at the door.

"Herein!" A German soldier entered and saluted. He brought a message from the trenches above. It explained the little burst of fire, warned him. The officer stood for a moment in thought, then his face lit up with a malicious pleasure. The clever blue eyes saw a sequence of events—the messenger from the countess, whose sudden scramble over the opposing parapet had drawn the German fire, imploring rescue of the distressed; a French commander, intoxicated with love for a beautiful woman, catching fire at the news, issuing wild orders, seeing only his mistress in imminent danger; a reckless avalanche of French soldiery sweeping down the sides of the ravine in a blind quixotic chivalry. He saw——"Famos!" he ejaculated, and laughed softly to himself. He wrote out an answering message, a long one, and handed it to the orderly.

When the countess returned to the room, garbed for departure, she found him seated at the piano, playing gently with a sentimental touch. He rose at her entrance, performed a polite bow.

"Madame, you appear to have a very interesting house," he said in his stiff French; "would you do me the honour of escorting me over it?"

The countess stared at him, dumbfounded. Were her prayers miraculously answered? Delay!—delay!—delay!

"If you wish, monsieur," she answered in a calm, controlled voice. Following the twin thought in her brain, her eyes searched the carpet.

He noticed the glance, drew the letter from his pocket.

"I think you dropped this, madame," he said, handing it to her.

She took it from him. Had he read it? The blonde face that met her questioning gaze was impassive under its smiling courtesy.

For an instant they confronted each other. With a cynical sense of superiority, pleasant to himself, he read her delight at his unexpected request, carefully though she tried to disguise it, read her quickly banished doubt that he had penetrated her scheme, was counter-plotting. He could almost phrase her thankful prayer to God—begging for a continuance of the miracle—that the barbarian had thus delivered himself into the strong hands of her lover. He would surely come! Both as they stood thus silent were calculating the necessary minutes—but his calculation was a double one. With the politest of bows, he opened the door for her.

Together they went through salon after salon, candlelit since he refused to have the shutters opened. In contrast with his previous manner, he displayed not the least haste. Leisurely he lingered over each piece, discussed it, appraised it with real connoisseurship as though he were merely a cultured guest. She loitered willingly, her brain on fire, every sense at strain. The precious moments were accumulating. She found new treasures for his admiration, racked her memory for rare objects that might hold him yet a little longer. He handled them, was enthusiastic, with calm audacity regretted this terrible war which imperilled so many beautiful things. Not once did he depart from his attitude of studied politeness. And while he spoke she was listening—listening—for the sudden shout, the quick close detonations, which should announce her deliverance.

At any moment now! She glanced for the barbarian's weapon, her heart praying for his safety. Out there beyond the shuttered windows he was coming in might at the head of his men. She seemed to see him—running towards her, past the Cupid-crowned fountain. She exulted in the crass absence of suspicion in the hatefully calm enemy at her side.

Out there in the twilight the precincts of the château were being lined with grey-clad soldiers, settling themselves in hidden firing positions. The officer saw them, with experienced second-sight. He smiled, blandly. His prisoner loitered, desperately prolonging his happy preoccupation.

When they returned to the salon it was to find another German officer waiting. Unseen by her, they exchanged a significant look.

There was a sharp, hissing, ugly rush in the air and a loud crash in the courtyard.

By a fortunate chance the colonel was near when the panting Marie scrambled over the parapet to the accompaniment of a dozen rifle bullets. On the point of collapse, the old woman sank into his arms, stammered confused unintelligible words, gave him the scrap of paper. Consigning her to the care of an orderly, he read the message, then raised his head, his fingers crushing the paper. He stood motionless, in intense thought. Slowly his eyes turned, fell upon the old woman shaking more with fright from the narrowly escaped bullets than from her exertions. Then his gaze lifted, fixed itself with frowning concentration upon the clay wall of the trench. He saw only with an inner vision. Around him no one spoke. His jaw set hard.

He raised himself upon the fire-step, gazed over the parapet through his glasses. The opposing lip of the ravine, bare of undergrowth a few yards from the top, lay silent, seemingly deserted. He called up an officer, handed him his glasses, indicated a point, ordered an unceasing watch upon it. Then he sent orderlies for his chefs-de-bataillon and the artillery observation officer in all haste.

They came. The battalion commanders received definite instructions and departed. The artillery officer remained with him. The ancient Marie sat upon the fire-step of the trench, trembling but recovering. She watched the saviour of her mistress with fascinated eyes.

The trench began to fill with soldiers. They crouched in their firing positions, their heads kept carefully below the parapet. Here and there little groups were busy about the machine-guns, fitted the long comb-like strips of cartridges, huddled ready to hoist the weapon into action. The watching officer called, without moving his head.

"Infantry are slipping into the ravine, mon colonel!"

The colonel, stern, impassive, ordered him to report when the movement ceased.

The long trench filled with crouching riflemen lay in a hush of intense expectancy. There was scarce a movement save the quick, involuntary jerks of nerves at strain. The old woman's eyes began to wander, puzzled, seeking comprehension. The wild rush forward she had imagined, would it never come? She waited, breathless, for the inspiring command of the colonel that should wake the tumultuous Hurrah! The watching officer reported:

"Movement has ceased, mon colonel. About two hundred men."

The colonel drew his watch from his pocket, glanced at the dial. Beyond that he made no movement. The old woman's eyes were fixed upon him. Suddenly she noticed that he wore neither sword nor revolver. In a flash she understood. She sprang up like a madwoman, crying at the top of her voice.

"Soldiers! To the rescue! The Boches are taking away my mistress! Now! Save her! Your colonel—her lover—abandons her! Abandons her! Cowards! Cowards! Do you want an old woman to show you the way?"

She leaped in a frenzy upon the fire-step, tearing aside the soldiers to make way for her with cat-like hands. There was a stir along the trench. The soldiers knew her, knew her mistress, their generous hostess. There was a murmur. The colonel stood like a statue carved in stone. His face was that of an ascetic at the supreme moment. In his eyes was the glow of a mystic who beholds a vision.

He turned to the old woman.

"Be quiet!" he commanded. His eyes rather than his voice quelled her. She sank in a passion of hysterical weeping to the floor of the trench. He glanced at his watch again, replaced it, waited. Age-long minutes passed. He turned to the artillery officer.

"Now!" he said. "But be careful! As near to the château as possible without touching it."

The officer shouted an order to the waiting telephonist. Overhead there was the rush of a shell, from far behind the sharp crack of a gun. Leisurely—one—two—three—four—the battery fired. The observation officer looked over the parapet. The colonel mounted by his side, watched also.

One—two—three—four—the battery fired again, repeated itself once more. Down there among the trees was a faint drifting smoke.

The colonel counted the minutes as the well-placed shells dropped around the château of his dreams. He saw, where none other saw, the sudden alarm below; the prisoner hurriedly evacuated from her home, dragged scrambling up through the dark trees into safety on the other side. One—two—three—four. She should be out of harm's way.

He turned his face to the trench, shouted an order. As he turned his gaze again swiftly towards the enemy he had a glimpse of something upon the bare lip of the ravine—something white, quickly moving. He had miscalculated! In a sudden agony, he shrieked rather than shouted a countermanding order. Too late! His voice was drowned in one long smashing detonation of a thousand rifles in an irregular volley from the trench. From the battery behind came the rapid, multiplied hammer-slams of the guns firing at their maximum speed.

He had a ghostly vision of an anguished woman's face, denying love.

The ravine was lashed by a tornado of shell and bullets. Caught in its depths, unseen yet precisely imagined from above, men were clambering in an agony of desperation to escape from the death that crashed unceasingly overhead and hailed about them. The white shrapnel puffs were countless against the dark background of the trees.

For a quarter of an hour the fierce fire continued, was answered in bitter anger from the opposing trenches. Then on both sides it died away. The dead in the valley lay in quiet.

The colonel, his face rigid, turned to walk along the trench. Suddenly a dog trailing a cord leaped over the parapet, dashed at him in a frenzy of joy. Then, perceiving the old woman, it jumped at her, nosed around her with vigorously wagging tail.

The old woman shrieked. The colonel looked. There was blood upon the dog's coat. The old woman drew herself up, held the colonel's eyes. "Murderer!" she cried with the intensity of a curse, and fainted.

The colonel strode on.

On a bitter day in December, three months later, the colonel returned from his morning tour of the trenches for which he was responsible. They were trenches in another landscape, far from those whose memory lay like a sear across his soul. At the entrance to the sandbagged, wrecked farmhouse which served him as a home the soldier-courrier was in the act of extracting letters from his wallet. The colonel took the bundle destined for him. At the sight of the topmost envelope he stopped as though he had seen a ghost. With trembling fingers he tore it open, read:

"My hero! I understood! I understood! Oh, didn't you know I understood? How grand you are—more than a man! All these weary months of imprisonment, trial, release and travel, I have been hungering to tell you this. Home once more, France is more than ever France to me since you ennobled me in sacrifice. Beloved!—--"

The colonel hurried into his quarters to read the letter in solitude. None might see his face.

THEY COME BACK

Whittingham Street, N., had benefited by the war. The long vista of its windows flush with the pavement was decent with curtains of a cleanness unwonted before the cataclysm. There were strange dots of reflected sunlight from brass door-handles and knockers that were polished. These things were symbols of the newly realised importance of Whittingham Street's inhabitants in the scheme of society, an importance which, swiftly translated into self-esteem, expressed itself with a uniformity natural to life in a mean street. That house was poor indeed which did not possess its gramophone. The womenfolk were curiously predominant to those who remembered the old-time loungers at the corner "pubs," and that womenfolk, disdainful of the feathers of the long ago, was arrayed in startlingly smart, well-emphasized, cheap copies of the latest fashions, oddly incongruous with the tall, smoke-vomiting chimneys of Messrs. Hathaway's great factory which closed the vista of the street. The sparseness of the men, immediately remarked, received a solemn significance from the flag-hung shrine on the wall of the Council School. The children who played in front of it—paper helmet, tin-can drum and wooden sword—were vividly cognizant that this was a time of War.

It was evening, and from the great gates of Messrs. Hathaway's factory poured a ceaseless stream of women. But not this evening did that stream flow down the street with its usual swift and uninterrupted course. There were checks in it—obstacles of groups that talked excitedly and forgot to progress—while others in eager haste eddied round them. On the high wall by the gate, a bill-poster was covering a "War Savings" placard with another of different meaning. A black cloud of smoke drifted away from the tall chimneys and was not reinforced other than by faint and lessening wisps.

A young woman, one of those whose urgent haste trifled not with talk, hurried down the street, stopped before one of the neatest house-fronts, tremblingly thrust a key into the latch, opened and ran breathlessly upstairs.

A grey-haired old woman rose from a wooden chair by the side of a cradle in a clean and modestly furnished room. At the entrance of her daughter-in-law she laid a finger on her lips and looked warningly to the infant. Then remarking an obvious distress, she changed colour.

"What's the matter, Ann?" she whispered, shaking with a sudden alarm. She had to steady herself by the support of the table. "Not—Jim?"

The young woman shook her head, controlled her panting breath.

"Hathaway's!" she brought out. "Closing down!"

The elder stared speechlessly for a moment, then seated herself with that blank mute resignation of the aged poor, long disillusioned of any title to good fortune. The fingers of her unshapely hands twined and untwined themselves tensely in her lap.

"Don't you hear, mother?" said the young woman irritably. "Hathaway's are closing down!"

"Oh, dear!" the old woman raised a face that was strained with imminent tears. "I knew it 'ud never last—I knew it 'ud never last!"

"What we shall do, 'Eaven knows!" said Ann, viciously accenting the sole possible fount of knowledge. "They're all closing down—all of 'em, all round!" Her gesture, as she unpinned her hat and put it, with an excess of energy, on the table, testified to the completeness of the closed horizon. She stood looking at the sleeping child, her brows bent, her mouth troubled. Then suddenly she flung herself on her knees and buried her head in the old woman's lap, shaking with sobs.

"Oh, I did so want to keep it nice for Jim when 'e comes back! I did! I did! All we've got together. And now it'll all go—bit by bit! And I've worked so 'ard—so very 'ard! An' 'e'll never see, never know 'ow nice it was! Oh—mother!" She could utter no more words, only inarticulate sounds.

The old woman soothed her, stroking her hair.

"There, dear! there, dear! Don't take on! It'll all come right. I can go out again an' do a bit of cleanin'. I daresay Mrs. Smith'll take me on again. I ain't done no work for a long while—sitting 'ere eatin' your bread—I've 'ad a nice rest, I 'ave—I'm quite strong again now. We'll both get somethin', you see, dear!"

The young woman raised herself.

"No!—No!—No!—You shan't work any more!" She turned her head wearily. "I can't make it out. What's happening? Why are they all shutting down like this?"

The old woman looked at her stupidly. The remote causes which made or unmade her unimportant existence were beyond her comprehension.

"What's that?" cried Ann, jumping to her feet. "What's 'e calling?"

The raucous shout of a newsvendor floated up from the street. Ann listened for a moment—and then, after a hurried search for a halfpenny in her purse, dashed out of the door and down the stairs.

She reappeared after a bare minute, brandishing the newspaper, wild-eyed, panting.

"Mother! Mother!" She could not wait to enter the door before commencing her news. "It's Peace! Peace!" She struggled with the unfolded paper, crushed it together again, searching eagerly for the magic headlines. "Here it is! Listen!" The old woman, equally all trembling eagerness, was standing at her side, pawing vaguely at the arm which held the newspaper. Ann read out the great news. "'The wild rumours current during the past few days have received a startling confirmation. It is announced that an armistice has been signed on all the fronts. This undoubtedly means a general Peace. The end of the war has come.' Mother! it's all over! it's all over—and Jim'll be coming back! Oh, I can't 'ardly believe it! It's all over! Oh, thank God—thank God!"

"All over! My Jim! Safe and sound! Oh," the old woman commenced that sniffling weep common to the aged and the young. "I can't 'elp it, Ann—I can't 'elp it!—I must cry!"

Ann dashed down the newspaper and flung her arms round the old woman in a close embrace. "Mother! Mother! I never was so"—and here a sob checked her speech also—"so 'appy in my life!" Face against face, the tears of the two women mingled—tears not of grief but of emotion for which there was no expression. Somewhere down the street church bells were ringing in joyous peal on peal. It might have been merely a coincidence of practice, but to the two women whose simple souls beat close together, in a swoon of intense feeling that obliterated the sharp outlines of environment, this happy rioting of the bells seemed a holy blessing on the moment.

"Oh, Ann dear, Ann dear," said the old woman, looking up. "What a thanksgiving it'll be for all the poor anxious women!"

"Oh, we're very lucky—we're very lucky. Jim'll be coming back. Think of it, mother!"

They kissed one another as if each were kissing the man who would come back as son and husband.

"We've got to keep it for 'im," said Ann. "All the little 'ome. An' 'e'll soon be back to work for us an' the baby, an' we shan't never be parted any more! Oh, mother, think of the poor women who won't 'ave no one to come back to 'em! When they see 'em marching by! Oh—we're lucky, we're very lucky!"

The old woman stood staring out of the window in vague thought, her eye caught by the vivid red of the flags on the War Shrine.

"It'll be a different world, Ann, when they all come back," she said. "Them what 'ave been left be'ind all through will find lots missing what they look for. And them what come back won't come back the same. It'll never be the same again, any of it; let's 'ope it'll be better."

They were coming back. The Mother-City of the Empire woke, silent of traffic, decked for a day that knew no sufficient parallel, the day when the thousands of her sons—those who had gone in their ones and twos, their single battalions—should march back from vast adventure in the full majesty of their corporate soldier-life. The London Divisions were coming back from the War, were marching for the last time at full strength. And the London streets were tunnels of gay flags, walled with black masses of citizens kept clear from the sanded roadways. From every steeple the bells tossed out their exuberant rejoicing. In every breast of the millions there congregated was a surge of emotion that exhaled in one sustained murmur of the gladness for which there are no words but which fills the eyes and chokes the throat.

They were coming! The thrilling blare of instruments of brass; the heart-stirring tap and roll and beat of the drums; the intoxicating rhythmic swinging lilt and crash; the brave gay runs of melody, sublimely simple, that bring the tears; the solid, even tramp of thousands who march as one—and the leading files were passing in a storm of cheers, a madness of waving hands. For the last time they passed shoulder to shoulder in the familiar ranks, marching as they had marched for all the years of exile, marching as they had marched down the fatal roads to Loos and Gommecourt, Guillemont and all those rubble heaps where the bravest and the dearest of the greatest city of the world died for the fragment of a village and for England. Rifles at the slope, bare bayonets asserting the ancient privileges that they had won, O so dearly, the right to flaunt, the heavy weather-stained pack on the sturdy shoulders, the steel helmets awry with the tilt of long-familiar use, the brown strong faces gleaming with their smiles—so they marched, not any more under the thunder of the guns, but in a frenzy of voices where the madly rioting bells were lost.

Battalion by battalion—all the glorious names, London's own—the London Scottish, first in the fray in the long ago, the Queen's Westminsters, the Kensingtons, the London Rifle Brigade, the H.A.C., the numberless battalions of the London Regiment—they came, each with its aura of the deathless dead. They came from the interminable purgatory of the endless trenches, terminated at last, from the unimaginable inferno of Hill 60, from the hopeless dying of May the Ninth, from the fierce hopes, the bitter strife of Loos, from the massacre of Gommecourt and the bloody fights of Guillemont, of Vimy Ridge, of Messines, of a thousand places that were humble and are henceforth names of splendour. Miraculously strong, happy, pregnant with vivid life they emerged from that distant whelm of peril. And the eyes that had looked so long at death in the bare fields pocked hideously with the disease of war, looked up now at the ranked tall buildings, so familiar and yet so strange, so impressively permanent after timeless æons of destruction. Behind those windows—could it be?—they had sat at desk through months and years. Between them and that past was a curtain of fire, of emotions that had transformed, of the intensity of life which has persisted in the face of death. And rank by rank, battalion after battalion, swinging with powerful stride, they marched back into the past that had seemed for ever gone.

And those who watched the level ranks flowing in their endless stream, cheering with throats now incapable of aught but the inarticulate cry, perceiving them mistily through a blur of tears, saw more than the men who marched, treading once again the asphalt of the London streets. They saw the ghosts of ranks, doubling—more than doubling—the ranks of living men, the ghosts of those who had looked as these looked, brown-faced, strong-limbed, the incarnation of living will, and were now no more than the wind blowing over the desolate countrysides where they had ceased to be. Yet were they present, the men who had died that England might live. The stir of their souls was in the skirling pipes, the wail and feverish beat of the fifes and drums, the maddening purposeful blare and thud of the brass bands. They looked out of the eyes of those who marched—the soul unconquerable, the living spirit of the English race. And a divine afflatus swept over the waving, cheering crowds, swept them to a wilder intoxication. One, whose faculty of speech was not yet overwhelmed, cried: "Three cheers for the boys who are left behind! Hurrah! Hurrah!—--" and could not finish. And a woman who stood, tensely pallid, staring at the so-familiar badges of the troops who passed, stared at utter strangeness, and fell as dead.

The next battalion followed on, singing, carrying on a tune caught up far back along the route, the farewell song of Kitchener's Army of 1915, sung now as an instinctive antistrophe to that old chorale when they had marched to war:

"Keep the home fires burning, While your hearts are yearning, Though your lads are far away, they dream of home, There's a silver lining Through the dark cloud shining, Turn your dark clouds inside out Till the boys come home."

They passed in a roar of voices that drowned the band.

So the long, long columns of the London Divisions tramped through the heart of the Mother-City, under the fluttering of countless flags, under the surge and resurge of joy-bells from every steeple, under great banners that proclaimed the gratitude of the city. Rank after rank they lifted their eyes to the laurel-green inscription that spanned the street at Temple Bar: "Shall We Forget?—Never!"

Rank by rank they passed under the promise—the thousands of men welded in the fires of war to a wondrous miracle of collective soul—passed onward for the last time as one living unit, ere they should lay down their arms, fall out—and disperse, individuals that were fragments of a sacred memory, the shreds of a battle-flag distributed.

Sir Thomas Jackson Hathaway, Kt., Alderman of the City of London, looked along the masculine faces, spaced with the interstices of the departed ladies, of the little dinner-party of intimate friends, and then again to the brown keen visage of his son. He pushed along the decanter—he was old-fashioned and made a virtue of it—"Fill up, Harry, my boy—I've been looking after the cellar while you've been away—there's more of it." He laughed a little at the mirth of his implied suggestion that there might possibly be a shortage in the cellars of Sir Thomas Hathaway. And his guests laughed a little in courtesy.

"We've kept the flag flying here also, my boy," said the big, heavily jovial host, puffing hugely at his cigar and then taking it from his mouth to examine it with a superfluously critical eye. "You'll find things as well—better, than when you left. You don't mind, gentlemen, this little talk of shop? After all, we're all friends together, and most of us have some small interest in the little business, ha! ha!" The guests were, in fact, Sir Thomas Hathaway's co-directors in the large enterprises he controlled. He continued: "Better I may say, for we have been very conservative—we've looked to the younger generation away fighting our battles for us—and we've built up a reserve fund that a few years ago we shouldn't have dreamed of. You've come back to a first-class concern, Harry, my boy. Here's to it!" He raised and drained his glass, setting a followed example to his guests.

Captain Hathaway had been toying with a match on the tablecloth. He looked up—quiet and thoughtful, his face clean-cut and aristocratic by contrast with the heavy opulence of his sire.

"You don't anticipate Labour trouble, then, father?"

Sir Thomas Hathaway laughed, a guffaw, and crashed his hand on the table.

"Labour troubles, my boy! You need have no fear on that score. We're going to teach Labour a lesson. We haven't built up our reserve for nothing.—not only ourselves, but all the houses in the trade. For long enough we've been dictated to by Labour—and now, by God, we're going to crush it! Do you know what's coming, my boy? Have you thought about it? There's going to be the biggest flood of Labour chucked on the market that the world has ever known. All of 'em fightin'—fightin' for jobs! And the trade, Harry, my boy, is going to lock out! We're closed down now, and we shan't open again till our own good time. How long d'you think the Union funds'll last? We'll bust 'em—bust 'em for ever and a day. And when we open our shops again to Labour—it'll be on our own terms! Here, fill up, gentlemen, I can vouch for this wine—cost me a sinful price it did. We'll bust 'em, my lad, so that never again in our time shall we hear a word of Labour trouble." He gulped the glassful of his sinfully costly wine.

Captain Hathaway glanced round the table at the somewhat flushed, semi-senile features of his father's guests and partners. They were one and all nodding their heads in varying emphasis of approbation. He got up.

"Well, father, I don't think we'll discuss it now. Suppose we join the ladies?"

In the high drawing-room, softly lit with diffused radiance from the ceiling, draped with precious modern hangings that were genuine and spaced out with expensive antique paintings that were not, furnished with the luxury of a wealth too utterly complete in its overwhelming newness to allow imagination its leap across an artistic restraint, the ladies purred, or cooed in careful falsetto, as they awaited the entrance of the males. At a grand piano, slightly removed, a young woman with a delicately refined face played softly to herself—in a quiet ecstasy of gladness for which this was the only satisfying expression.

Captain Hathaway, entering with his father's guests, came straight across to her, and she looked up, smiling, into her husband's face as though he had come in response to a murmured summoning spell. She ceased and leaned back her head against him as he stood close behind her.

"Oh, Harry," she said, "it's so lovely to have you again—for always, always!" Her eyes half closed and her bosom heaved as she drank in an intoxicating realization of his definite return, sketched to herself a delicious little swoon.

"My dear!" he murmured. "It's good! Home—home for always with my beloved!"

She clutched at his hand, and for a moment, while the loud-voiced crowd vanished, they were secret lovers, snatched up to dizzy heights, intensely thrilling with an exquisite community, eyes looking into eyes and seeing more than human brain can translate of transcendent vision. She released him and bowed forward suddenly with a little gulp, striking, with trembling hands, vague chords on the piano.

"Now, Ethel, my dear," came the crass boom of her father-in-law's voice, "when you've finished your spooning, let's have something jolly. What about that bit out of 'Not a Word to the Wife!' Tra-la-la-la-la!" He sketched a hideous caricature of blatant banality. "We're all jolly to-night—none of your mooning sentiment, but jolly. Eh, ladies and gentlemen?—properly jolly for Harry's first night back."

Ethel got up from the piano, coupling an allegation of another's superior capacity with an invitation to perform, an invitation smirkingly accepted.

The slangy crash and bang alternating with hyper-emphasized sentimentality of the current tune was a cover under which Ethel Hathaway retreated to happy intimacy with her husband. Not for long was she allowed it. The very-consciously best-looking of the co-directors' wives sidled up and subsided into the adjacent chair. She yearned up into Captain Hathaway's face, while she cooed deprecation of her intrusion to his wife.

"But I do so want to hear how Captain Hathaway earned his Military Cross! Of course, I read all about it in the papers—but then—they're so bald, aren't they? One misses, what shall I say?—the human touch of heroism."

Mrs. Hathaway caught her husband's eye and forbade the instant flight.

"Tell Mrs. Jameson all about it, Harry," she commanded coolly. There was something in the tone which rendered Mrs. Jameson's extorted confidence quite worthless.

"There's little to tell," said Captain Hathaway. "The fellow who really earned anything there was to get—and, I'm glad to say, got the D.C.M.—was one of my men, a chap named Jim Swain. He used to be in our employment, Ethel, by the way. It was a pretty tight corner and I got practically left alone—all the other fellows knocked out—and this chap Swain came up with a bag of bombs—jolly plucky thing, for there didn't seem a dog's chance—and we chucked the bombs at the Hun till he didn't dare raise his head. After a bit, some of another company came up and we consolidated that bit of trench. That's all there was to it."

"Oh, how splendid!" Mrs. Jameson enthused vaguely. "Leadership is everything, isn't it?"

"When you've got something to lead, Mrs. Jameson. One couldn't have better stuff than my men—they're magnificent. They're the nation—and now they're coming back they've got to be treated like the men they are and not like soulless machinery." He wound up on a note of fierce protest against something not obvious to his hearers.

"Now, Harry," said his wife, "don't inflict your theories on Mrs. Jameson. We both of us positively refuse to be sympathetic with the working class, don't we, Mrs. Jameson?" She laughed lightly. "The working class is just as selfish as any other."

A wave of collective chatter from an approaching group engulfed this conversation.

Late that night Sir Thomas Hathaway sat alone with his son.

"Now, Harry, my lad," he said. "You're going to take Ethel away for a three months' holiday. You've jolly well earned it, both of you. And, when you come back, you'll be head of Hathaway and Company. I've done my bit and I'm going to rest. My interest in the business is now being transferred into your name. That's my little present to you, my boy, by way of showing that I'm proud of you. And I know that you'll keep up the fine old traditions of the house, eh?"

The curtains had disappeared from the windows of Whittingham Street. The brass of the doors had lost its polish. The women who had tripped along in an earnest display of finery were replaced by blowsy unkempt females who stood at the doors and gossiped. Once more the corners emphasized by the sordid public-houses were the idling-ground of groups of men, more numerous, shabbier even than of old. But these men had not the shiftless look of their predecessors. In their faces, thin and white, was a hardness which was odd in an urban population. In the eyes which followed the progress of a stranger up the street was a dangerous glare. The flags of the War Shrine had disappeared; its gilt-inscribed panel was dingy and splashed with mud. At the far end of the street the great chimneys of Hathaway's works stuck up, clean of smoke, into a clear sky. The massive entrance gates were a closed wall across the vista.

In the little room to which Jim Swain had returned—after the days unnumbered of life in the open trenches, wet dykes in the winter, and in summer dusty sunken avenues where death struck suddenly in the glare; after the countless nights of clear stars rising to a wondrous infinity of multitude and distance above the dark bank of parapet—Ann bent over a soap-box cradle where a child whimpered in faint misery. The room was utterly bare of any furniture save the poor substitutes of a number of packing-cases of various sizes. The little home which Jim had established, which Ann had worked so passionately to improve, was a home no longer. It was merely a squalid shelter for squalid human animals.

Ann, on her knees by the child, looked up to the three figures in the centre of the room, her attention suddenly challenged by the clash of angry voices.

A tall man, fierce, with a shock of untidy hair falling on a narrow brow, a vivid red tie overwhelming the soft collar which kept it in place, was pointing a quivering finger at her husband's breast.

"You call yourself the leader of these men," he was saying, in a rage of scorn, "and you flaunt that scrap of coloured rag—you advertise your pride that you helped the bourgeois to fight his war! Take it off, man—fling it down and trample on it! The red on it is the blood of your fellow-workers!"

"Aye, that's just what it is, Laurence," said the ex-soldier with equal anger. "And I am proud of it. I'm proud that I did my bit for England—for England's ours, too, as well as the capitalists', and the war was our war, the war of the crowd of us—and we went out and risked our lives while you and your cowardly kind stayed at home and helped the enemy all you could. That's your patriotism! And now to hear you talk one would think England was an enemy country! I tell you it's our country as much as anybody's and our war that we fought for it! The red on this medal ribbon is the red of the blood of the chaps that died for it if you like—and I'm mighty proud to wear it. And, by God, Laurence, while I'm the leader of these poor chaps I won't have any traitor talk—is that clear?"

"Your country!" the other laughed bitterly. "What right have you got to a ha'porth of it?—you, who are being chucked out into the street—you, who haven't even the right to demand work and earn your bread! Bah! Militarism has rotted the soul of you!"

"It taught me to know a true man when I see him, anyway, Laurence—and you're none o' that kind! You, poisoning the minds of starving men——"

"And who keeps 'em starving? Who prevents 'em from helping themselves in the nearest baker's shop——"

"Now, lads—now, lads!" intervened the third man, a thick-set fellow in black coat and turned-up trousers over yellow boots. A smug self-confidence was native to his podgy countenance, was the complement of the cunning, scheming eyes. "There's no use quarrelling. What we've got to do is to 'elp each other—we working-men. The Union's bust, Jim, an' that's the fact of it—an' if Mr. Laurence's organization 'ere can't give us a 'and—well, I don't know what'll happen. This last trick of 'Athaway's, chucking the whole street out o' doors, fairly puts the lid on it!"

There was silence in the room and Jim glanced round at the haggard visage of his wife, bending, with tears on her cheeks, over the whimpering child.

"Yes, look!" said the tall man. "That's what you fought for, my lad!"

Jim did not reply. He pressed his hand to his brow as though his brain reeled. The Trade Union leader tried to profit by his silence.

"We're properly up against it—there's no dodging it. Mind you, Jim, I think there's a lot of reason in what Mr. Laurence says."

Ann stood up quickly and faced her husband.

"Jim!" she said, and her voice was firm though her chest heaved with weakness. "You'll do what's right—whatever 'appens!"

Laurence spoke again.

"We're perfectly ready to help—but this is the last time of offering. You know the terms. You're responsible for a good many hundreds of starving families, Swain—they mayn't listen to you much longer, don't forget——"

He was interrupted by fierce shouts in the street below, the reiterated blasts of a motor-horn, the crash of broken glass, a whir of machinery and yet fiercer shouts. All three rushed to the window. Below them a motor-car was stationary in the midst of a surging mob. The chauffeur lay senseless amid the debris of a shattered wind-screen. In the rear seat a youngish man was defending himself vigorously against the rain of blows showered on him by the mob which clambered on to the vehicle.

"My God! Captain Hathaway!" Even as Jim shouted he had turned to dash down the stairs.

He flung himself into the fierce mob as once before he had rushed at the knot of Germans with bombs poised to throw, his captain an imminent victim. Old instincts surged to supremacy—he fought his way blindly to the car in a blur of blows. A second later he had dragged a dazed man into the entrance of the house, had slammed the door.

"Come on, sir—come upstairs and sit down." Jim forgot for the moment the wretched room to which he invited him. He was living in a memory of the trench days where he had sometimes dreamed that his beloved captain might on some incredible occasion sit at tea with them in a nice little home and tell Ann that her husband had been a good soldier. Half supporting him, he pushed him into the apartment, pulled a box out for him to sit on.

"Here you are, sir. Take it easy for a minute. You'll soon be all right."

Captain Hathaway put his hand to a damp forehead, looked stupidly at the blood on it, and then, still dazed, stared at his rescuer.

"What?—Swain?" He smiled faintly. "For the second time, eh?"

"Yes, sir—I'm glad to say!"

The tall man picked up his soft hat, glaring from Jim to the employer he had rescued.

"Come on, Bruxby," he said, in a voice quivering with anger. "There's nothing more for us here—the man's a d—d scab!"

Jim listened to the heavy feet of the pair of them tramping down the staircase.

Captain Hathaway looked around him, then took a deep breath and stood up.

"I'm all right again now. It's all come back to me. Swain," he put his hand on the man's shoulder, "will you believe me when I say I quite understand—and that's it a shame, a d—d shame! I've been away. I couldn't do anything till now." He looked at the woman by the cradle, held out his hand. "This is Mrs. Swain?" She stood staring at him, making no responsive movement. "Look here, I want to help—here"—his hand dived into his pocket, fished up a bundle of notes—"why, you're starving, woman!" He thrust them into her hand and she let them fall on the floor.

"I want work, Captain Hathaway—not charity," said Ann, shaking with temptation resisted.

The ex-officer turned to his man.

"Swain," he said. "I haven't been blind to all this—but, believe me, I couldn't do anything till now. I want to talk to you. Will you listen to me?"

It was some time later when Captain Hathaway (who had already seen his chauffeur into a police ambulance while Jim harangued the crowd into sullenness) drove his car down to the great gates of Hathaway's works. Jim Swain, the men's leader, sat by his side.

In the long boardroom, with its thick Turkey carpet, its heavy mahogany furniture, its framed photographs of former directors, the controllers of Hathaway's and its linked houses sat already at the council-table. The air was heavy with cigar smoke when Captain Hathaway entered.

"Sorry I'm late, gentlemen—no,—a little accident—I'm quite all right—nothing at all serious," so he responded to the queries evoked by his cut forehead as he sat down.

His father rose, pompous, full-cheeked, settling his pince-nez with one hand, while he gathered together a little sheaf of papers with the other.

"Gentlemen," he said, "to-day I have to communicate to you officially what I think all of you know privately—a communication which (hem!) marks another epoch in the successful history of the house of Hathaway. I have transferred to my son, Captain Hathaway—who has not unsuccessfully graduated in the stern business of war—(Hear, hear!)—my controlling interest in all the enterprises of which hitherto I have been the head. I propose—and I believe you will second me in this—that Captain Hathaway be duly elected to the board as managing director." (It would have been difficult for the audience to have disputed this had they wished. There was a unanimous "Hear, hear!") Sir Thomas Hathaway passed a bulky envelope across to his son. "Here, Harry, I give you all the deeds of transfer, duly executed and dated as from yesterday. You are now the head of Hathaway and Company!" There was a faint sketch of a cheer from the fat old gentlemen round the table.

"Now, gentlemen," continued the retiring chief, "before I sit down, I should like to give you some account of my stewardship. I think we all of us perceived in the circumstances of the present time an opportunity to settle, once and for all, our score with Labour. That opportunity has not been neglected. All the factories controlled by us, in agreement with the other houses in the trade—which have most loyally backed our action—have been shut down. The date of their reopening has not yet been decided upon, but I may tell you this, gentlemen, the Trade Union with which we have had so much trouble in the past is bankrupt. We are entitled to industrial peace, on our own terms—but the terms which we have offered, and which were not ungenerous in the circumstances after safeguarding our interests, have been stubbornly rejected by the men's leader—the man Swain. This left us no alternative but to put on the screw—and we have replied by serving notices of ejection on all those of our ex-employees who are behindhand in their rent. I think you will agree with me that in this we have the fullest justice on our side! (Hear, hear!) And now, gentlemen, I retire from my managing directorship and make way for my son, in the fullest confidence that he will maintain and extend the great and honourable traditions of this business."

Captain Hathaway stood up. His face was strangely pale and set.

"Gentlemen, you have listened to my father's remarks. They represent accurately the theory of our past relationship between ourselves and our employees. (Hear, hear!) But, gentlemen, I want to bring home to you that it is a theory quite impossible to maintain at the present day! In accepting the leadership of this house, I am fully conscious of my responsibilities—responsibilities not only to you who have financial interests in the business, but to those who live by the employment we offer them and to the State which makes it possible for them to work and for ourselves to derive profit from that work. From this day, gentlemen, and for so long as I am head of this firm, our relations with our employees are on a different basis. The factories will reopen to-morrow—at the old Trade Union rates, excepting where the new rates I have offered to the men are more remunerative to them. The policy of the firm is reversed!"

Captain Hathaway, in all his experience of war, had never felt the need of all his courage so much as in making this announcement—which, to himself, sounded brutally bald.

One of the directors rose, banging nervously upon the table with his fist, and shaking with rage.

"By God!" he said, "I never thought Tom Hathaway's boy would be a traitor!"

Sir Thomas Hathaway half rose, and sat down again—looking as though he were going to faint.

Another of the directors stood up.

"Has our new managing director any other harmless little proposals to make?" he asked, in bitter sarcasm.

"Yes," replied Captain Hathaway, "I propose to take powers to create a new Deferred Stock which will rank for dividend after the Ordinary Stock has received eight per cent, but which will in all circumstances carry a right to vote on the board—and this stock will be vested in the representatives of our employees, chosen by them."

"It will never be agreed to by the men!" cried a voice.

"It is agreed to already by the men's representatives," replied the new chief, feeling the coolness of courage return to him as once when he had faced the mob of Germans.

The wealthiest of the directors, a man associated with other houses in the trade, rose in his turn.

"I warn you, Hathaway, that I shall dispose of my interests in this business—and I'm going to fight you to the last shilling! You'll be broke in a year!" "All of us! All of us!" came a chorus of approval. "We'll all fight! This is sheer madness!"

"Fight, if you will, gentlemen," said Hathaway calmly. "It won't pay you. I haven't been idle these three months. I may tell you that I have contracts in my pocket that will keep us going for many months to come—more than a year. The whole world is shrieking for goods, and Germany is supplying them—capturing your markets while you commit suicide in trying to get the better of Labour. In these last months I have established agents all over the world—and I've got the orders! I know what the other houses have got—I know what's open to you—you can't fight us!—but you'll be taken over by the Government if your obstinacy continues this unworthy industrial strife."

There was a silence of vague-headed, angry old men who did not quite know what to say.

"And now, gentlemen," continued Hathaway. "Let me plead for a better spirit. That great mass of human beings you coldly call Labour fought for England just as I fought for England, just as thousands and thousands of our own class fought. We've been together in the trenches year in year out and we've learnt to know each other, not as hostile abstractions, but as living men,—good men, the most of us. We learnt all sorts of things we didn't realize before the war, but most of all we learnt—and when I say we, I mean your sons as well—that we're all Englishmen and that we all have to play the game and stick together—officer and man. D'you think I who have watched over the comfort of my men, taught them, led them into danger and seen them unafraid, who have hungered with them, thirsted with them, gloried in them for these last long years—d'you think I can coldly condemn those men and their wives and children to starvation now? D'you think I can treat them as an enemy? I can't. And the men who have been proud of us, their officers,—d'you think they haven't learnt the value of leadership? They have—but not the leadership of a slave-master. In the long bitter years of strife those men have won for themselves a freedom of soul which is the life-force of a free Empire! Class-hatred! It has vanished as between officer and man. We're all Englishmen together—and we're going to work, share and share alike, in the new England, that, share and share alike, we fought for!" He flung open the door behind him. "Here, gentlemen, is Jim Swain, the leader of your work-people in their time of trouble. He saved my life twice—once in the trenches and got a D.C.M. when he ought to have had the V.C.—and again to-day when he set a seal of comradeship between the managing director and the employees of Hathaway's. Together, he and I, and those we represent, are going to make our patch of England worth the lives that were spent to save it!"

There was a hush in the room, and into that hush came the strains of a military band playing a regiment to the neighbouring railway station. It played the familiar marching tune of the old days, and a flaw of wind brought masculine voices in the uplift of the chorus.

"... There's a silver lining Through the dark clouds shining, Turn the dark cloud inside out, For the boys are home!"

"They're coming back!" cried Captain Hathaway. "Coming back in their thousands and their millions—officers and men—your sons at the head of the men they have learned to love! Comrades that can never be estranged! We're the new generation, gentlemen—the old order has gone—never to return—we've come back, Swain and I, from the borders of death that has taught us how precious life may be."

The heads, bald and florid, of that obese elder generation turned in a community of curious interest, to gaze at Swain—the man who had nerved his fellows to withstand an economic pressure they had thought irresistible and was now hailed as comrade by their own young chief.

The ex-soldier took a step forward.

"I should just like to say this, sirs—we men know what it is to have good officers—and we've never let 'em down. We've come back, officers and men, and officers like Captain Hathaway will always find their men work for them as they used to fight—for officers like him make us feel the Old Country is worth working for as it was worth fighting for. We've learnt to play the game—and we'll play it so long as we have fair play. The British soldier has learnt to die rather than surrender—and the British soldier is just the British working-man."

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